


Now Cracks a Noble Heart

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-31
Updated: 2006-08-31
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:19:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story begins with a ghost.  (Horatio/Ophelia, Horatio/Hamlet)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Cracks a Noble Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Iseult Variante

 

 

On a cold night up on the parapets, Horatio speaks to a ghost.

__

I had a friend once, and my studies. Life seemed simple, filling in candlelight hours with ancient philosophies. Existence felt as ne'er ending as the infinite celestial stretches of the skies -- and as the depths to which man, himself, might go in the face of them. Ink-scratches on parchment could figure out the space between, conflict spelled out through arithmetic.

One could say the story begins with a woman. Many do. One could say it begins with a man. With the vile temptations of flesh and throne, of heat and blood and the paths they take us down, as straight and narrow as the roads to Rome and all, too, ending in the same upturned, horrid question: and what of you?

The story begins with a ghost.

_

Rusted armor glints in the torchlight, and the guards know what to expect by now. The scholar speaks to the spirit, and no one questions how peculiar it sounds.

Simple lines, of battles drawn and grudges held. The ghost nods beneath his raised-up helm, his face exposed but cloaked in darkness.

He wants his son. So do I.

The rooster crows, and I descend to the castle.

_

There's uncertainty on his breath as he kisses me hello.

I tell him I am sorry for his father; his eyes go glassy and he starts to take me by the hand. He pulls it back.

"I can trust you," he says, as he stands back against the door to his chambers.

I nod. Simple truths: when to keep quiet, when to spill forth. I have always been his friend.

"You've heard too much already. I've no choice but to give faith to your vow."

"I shall swear I've seen no ghost," I say. It feels almost a relief.

"No. If you vow you'll hold it true, you'll hold it true. If vow you'll vow, then vow you'll keep. 'Tis not you I mistrust, 'tis constancy herself."

"Then that 'tis not constancy at all, my prince." I smile. "You can trust me, Hamlet."

"I am not mad," he says suddenly, hushed. He opens the door behind him. "You've seen a ghost," he says, as he gestures me to leave.

I do.

_

My footsteps echo in the corridors. The palace is larger than the University, enormous to my childhood home in Skanderborg. There's an eerie quiet I'd never found in either, and a whispering in the walls. I listen to the sound of my steps, and my breathing. I wonder if I am ever truly alone.

_Something rotten._

_

She's somewhere between a waif and a specter when I meet her first. She stares out at the riverbed, lined with the filigree-frost of winter's first breath.

"Ophelia," I say simply. I had heard the name and the history, the repeated facts and figures: calligraphies on envelopes, and details in rumor. The face is something else entirely, but it matches well enough.

She looks at me blankly, pale blond hair fallen over her shoulders like a shroud.

"Horatio," I say. "I studied with Hamlet before he..." there's a word in this somewhere. "Before he came home," I finish simply.

"What was he like?" she asks.

I think for a minute. Think of pale flesh in candlelight, of the taste of deep red wine, mingled with philosophy. There's the taste of tea on his tongue, the taste of salt on his skin. The turn of pages, the dull clunk of books dropped unread. The spill of ink on bedsheets: his laughter and my consternation. My hand pulling away from his, and his pressing closewards.

I think of the ways I tried to leave him, and the locks I put on the door. The way he'd click closed each and every one in turn, whilst I watched, and waited. I'd sit crossed-legged on the wooden chair, and smile, knowing what came next.

Except when it didn't.

"He liked to argue."

She comes alive when she laughs, even with this quiet barely-laughter.

"He does," she says. Then quieter, her hand on my wrist, her fingers freezing. "I try to tell him he doesn't love me."

"He doesn't," I say. My voice is clean and simple. There are no ghosts here, now, and I can feel the simplicity of reason warm like summer sun racing in my veins.

She looks at me and smiles sadly. "I know," she says, and she is gone.

I stand against the window and listen to her footsteps as she walks away. The wind seeps through between the windowpanes, and the hall is cold and ghostly.

I can still feel the touch of her fingers on my skin.

_

"I do not like this lovesick madness we fall into," I say to him later, after supper. The doors are closed. There's only one latch to lock here, and I lock it. I'm speaking generally; I'm speaking to hear the words.

"But is not love a part of the beauty and the horror of man?" he asks, with the same devilish smile, if sadder than I remember it.

"Perhaps it's a sickness," I postulate as I sit beside him. His hand is in mine, and I want to tell him I love him. I want to tell him I don't love him. But I'm thinking of swearing myself against it all, at least until our physicians can make sense of it.

It leads to dead ends, filled with blood and ghosts and love-worn solitude, devoid of reason. A madness of melancholy.

"Do you love her?" I say. I ask it with a scientist's inflection. Evidence to gather, a world to fill in with fact in place of approximation.

"You've met Ophelia," he says.

"I shouldn't have come." I stand. My hand still rests in his. He looks up at me.

"You should have," he says, starting softly. His voice grows louder. "Unless you came for a feast and a funeral, to bid for favor and call it your respects."

"You will be King someday, Hamlet," I say. It's not a surety, but I can gauge age and succession well enough, and I can reassure a friend. "Someday it's your favor we all will plead for, and it will be yours to say who truly loves Denmark, and how."

"I shall see you on the morrow," he says, coldly.

I almost plead back with _I love you_ but stop myself in time. Gasping at my near thrice misspeaking, I lean back weak against the door shut and latched behind me.

_

She finds me as I pace the parapets, thinking of serpents in the garden and dead kings who leave their earthly tombs.

The late-afternoon wind blows cold; I draw my cloak tightly. She's pale, and frail, and shivering. I think that one good gust might plunge her over.

"Horatio."

I look up. "Lady Ophelia."

She blushes at the address; she shakes her head a little.

"He returns my letters. He won't see me."

"I'm sorry," I say simply. It's true enough. I am.

Her eyes are dark in dusklight sun as she glares at me. "You know."

I shake my head. She steps towards me. I can feel her quivering form close up to mine. Her fingers are cold, but she is warm against the wind.

"He said he loves me," she whispers, her head against my chest.

I want to turn away, but I must be afraid she'll fall without me. I run my fingers through her hair.

"Hamlet loves." It's true enough.

She looks up at me, and I wonder for a minute why I ever thought her weak.

"Some days, I think you'll lose yourself in words, and words are all that will be left of you."

"Does he say that to you?" I ask. It sounds like one of our late-night meaningless arguments. Spare thoughts as candlelight burns low, somewhere between wine and warmth and touch.

She laughs, a little. "He tells me he loves me. He tells me I'm beautiful. That he'll marry me when he can, if he can. And then he says nothing. He says he has to go. He won't see me. He sends back my letters, unopened or ripped to shreds. I saw him in the courtyard yesterday, and he grabbed me. He _shook_ me, Horatio." Her hands are around my arms, and she's shaking. I'm shaking. I'm backed up against the battlements.

"Shhh," I say softly. "He's gone mad," I say.

She reads the lie in my eyes.

"Oh!" she says, and she's the frail little reed in my arms again. "I've made a terrible mistake."

She leans into me, and I kiss her forehead. She reaches a chilly finger to my chin and I look down at her. Kiss her, feel her against me. Her heart beats and I can't count out the rhythm. The pretty little words are gone.

_So have I._

_

"I'm not mad," he says, later, when we're alone.

His courtly clothes are rumpled - he's slept in them again.

"Sometimes," he starts, "I want to blame the woman. She's the one who tempted him with her promises, and her self. A man is but a man after all. We bleed, we dream: we dream of blood and wine and all sorts of earthly delight. After all, we know not what comes after. And when we sense we do, we but sense that it is worse yet than the shadow upon the earth that makes our days.

"No, I want to blame her. 'Twas the woman after all that listened to the serpent, that forced the knowledge upon us." He looks at me, his eyes clear and cruel. "The knowledge is what dooms us all. I-- once, I was happy."

I look at him. I want to respond. I want to tell him that happiness is but an illusion we cast upon ourselves. That what separates man from the primitive, from the animals and -- too -- from the serpent, is the great and haunting ability to think the world through. To live both in thought, and in action.

"Once, you were happy," is all I can say.

"I want to blame her, but I love her."

I can think of nothing to say.

His eyes light up. I look at him, unsure whether to be pleased or worried. He smiles at me. "A farce! It's all a silly farcical thing. We'll have a play, a farce, a tragedy. A ploy. In which to catch a liar and a king."

He seems alive again as he throws on his overcloak. He opens the door and ushers me out before him. As I pass close, he touches my shoulder softly and whispers in my ear.

"I am not mad."

His breath is hot upon my skin. I turn around to look at him. "No, you're not," I say as I look him in his eyes.

I'm not sure I believe it.

"'Tis truth to many a lie," he says, and his laughter echoes down the corridor.

_

"He said he loved me," she says as I kiss her bared shoulders. The doors are locked tight, though the sound of clicking latches still brings me back to Wittenberg. "I gave him his flowers back, though they'd gone dead."

She's singing as I kiss her breasts, as I tease my fingers up beneath her petticoats. She writhes a little while she sings. She looks alive; she's dying.

"Merry a many morning true  
A girl went down to sea  
He swears, she says, he swears I do  
And yet the girl is free."

"Ophelia," I murmur into her skin.

She stops, the singsong voice gone. She whispers like the dead.

"I'm to have a child."

"No," I say as I slip inside her. There's no rationale behind it. It's hope or need or want. I've seen ghosts speak of murder from purgatory. I've seen madness betwixt in reason. This is a world of death, this rotten Denmark. She shall not -- we shall not -- bring life into it.

"My boy was meant to be King." She's crying into my neck as I press flush against her.

She moans in time with my movements. "The king is dead, the boy is dead, the queen is dead, the court is dead. The king is dead, my boy is dead, my father is dead. The king is dead, my boy is dead, the prince is dead, my brother is dead."

"Ophelia, Ophelia," I whisper. Faster and faster and faster.

"And we all fall down," she whispers to my skin as I release.

I lie beside her, her head on my bared chest, my fingers in her hair. "It's all right," I whisper. "The king lives still, and the prince, and your father. It will all be all right."

Again, I speak with nothing -- no facts or wit-philosophies -- to hold me upright.

"It will not be all right," she says, and for a fleeting second I wonder if she, too, is only feigning madness. She walks her fingertips down my chest, her voice suddenly light and teasing. "Nightshade for truth, quince and oleander. A crimson rose for my love, and rosemary for a child who never was, never wanted, never shall be."

Her cold fingers are around me again. I want to pull away, but cannot.

"Rue, love, I've need of rue, and tansy. Have you any rue for your love?"

I want to tell her love is a sickness, but she's no need of that cure. I only turn to her and force a smile. "Oh, I've much to rue," I say aghast at my own horrid play at cleverness.

_

Her father is dead come morning, and she's no need for rue nor tansy when we find her in the river.

As they fall to the floor around me, I can hear the clamor of an army growing closer at our backs. The clamor of their armaments and the click-clack rhythm of their steps remind me of the notching of deadbolts in Wittenberg. But tonight, the prince slumbers sweet as fallen starlight in that soft and silent sleep of death.

The hall is drafty, so I light a fire. As I stare into the flames, I think of Prometheus, separating man from the masses.

Hamlet was a good man, and my friend. Perhaps it was the woman to blame, or the ghost. Or the king. Perhaps... perhaps it was me. And I live still, I think, as I reach for the last drops of wine.

I stand there regarding the blood-red droplets swirling in the poisoned glass as Norway makes its way onto our hallowed land and batters down the doors that locked on our tragedy.

I am the only one left, and perhaps there is reason behind that end, after all.

"I did not do this," I say as they begin to lay to rest the bodies. I am merely a scholar, after all, with no stake in the matter and no great skill at swords. "I did not do this," I say, listening to my voice echo in the large room, so full and yet so empty.

"Tell us of what happened here," says young Fortinbras, as his banner-bearers stake his claim and he takes his father's revenge over those already-dead, over Denmark fair and rotten.

I look down at the still face of Prince Hamlet. There is no madness in his eyes now, but no life either. He sleeps as peacefully as he used to, in Wittenberg, with pansy and roses and Ophelia. I put the goblet softly on the table. I kneel to what is now our Denmark, and I tell him of Prince Hamlet: the wicked king, the good prince, and the cruelness of inconstancy. The farce and, oh, the tragedy.

__

As the fire heats the hall and the blood dries crimson on the floor, Horatio tells his story. His words dance prettily in the firelight, and he cloaks his tale in the poison-cold rationality of a learned but fair observer.

There are no more ghosts in Denmark; the world believes him

 


End file.
